The New Yorker Out Loud: A Rediscovered F. Scott Fitzgerald Story

In this week’s The New Yorker Out Loud podcast, our fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, discusses “Thank You for the Light,” the rediscovered F. Scott Fitzgerald short story that appears in this week’s issue of the magazine. The story was found among the author’s papers by Fitzgerald’s grandchildren and was passed along to the agent for the estate by the Fitzgerald scholar and editor James West. Fitzgerald had submitted it to The New Yorker in 1936, four years before his death, but it was rejected with the following note:

We’re afraid that this Fitzgerald story is altogether out of the question. It seems to us so curious and so unlike the kind of thing we associate with him, and really too fantastic. We would give a lot, of course, to have a Scott Fitzgerald story and I hope that you will send us something that seems more suitable. Thank you, anyhow, for letting us see this.

Treisman speculates that it might have been the story’s irreverent treatment of the Virgin Mary that made it “out of the question” in 1936. But times have changed and the Virgin “has undergone a lot worse treatment than she did at Fitzgerald’s hands in the years since.” Now, Treisman says, the story reads as a “lovely little sketch” and “a curiosity of literary interest.”

The podcast also includes a discussion with Mark Singer and David Grann about the challenges of reporting on elusive and deceptive subjects. Grann has written about several mysterious characters, including the French con artist Frédéric Bourdin. Grann talks about the qualities that draw him to his subjects. “You don’t want to fetishize craziness,” he says. “You want to hopefully have a character who is fascinating enough that you want to unravel who that person is.” Singer describes the arduous process of tracking down Kip Litton, who is suspected of fabricating a marathon career. “I had to physically show up on his doorstep, which I had never previously done as a reporter…. When I finally showed up there he immediately fled from me. So I kept e-mailing him and said, ‘I’m not leaving town until we speak.’”

You can hear these discussions, as well as a conversation with Andy Borowitz, in the stream above or by downloading it for free from iTunes.

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